Jesus said in John 15:1-11: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman.  Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit, he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.  Now ye (His faithful disciples whom He is speaking to here)) are clean through the word which I have spoken unto you.  Abide in me, and I in you.  As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; no more can ye, except ye abide in me.  I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit: for without me ye can do nothing.  If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.  If ye abide in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you.  Herein is my Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be my disciples.  As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you: continue ye in my love.  If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept my Father’s commandments, and abide in his love.  These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full.”

Abiding in Him then is obviously inseparable from living by His Word.  And to live by His Word, we must seek the Word and let it confront us and instruct us continually.  Even if we can only go forward slowly on our hands and knees, that is exceedingly better than being stagnant or going backwards.  The Bible should be regarded as our home since it is the revelation which God has given of Himself and expects us to live by.  The Lord will never guide us contrary to His Word, as His Spirit inspired the Bible.  Those who are hoping for heaven but don’t deal with God through the Scriptures continually are hoping for something which is not congruent and fitting with the way that they are living.  Many read the Bible though without actually dealing with God as they do so.  

Consider then Genesis 3:22-24 where God drove man from the Garden of Eden.

Genesis 3:22-24: “And the Lord God said, Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil: and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the tree of life, and eat, and live for ever: Therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from whence he was taken.  So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.”

The flaming sword guarding the tree of life signifies the horrible death which the Seed of the woman, which was foretold earlier in Genesis chapter 3, would have to die in order to open the way for humans to one day eat of the tree of life.  It also signifies the symbolically bloody death to self and sin which any who would have a part with the Messiah have to die, in identification with Him, in order to partake of His redemption.  

Noah had to build the ark in order to properly recognize God’s authority and be as diligent as he should have been in seeking Him.  Abraham had to leave his own land and go into a strange land in order to do the same.  The suffering of each to act upon God’s Word was the only way for them to obtain His grace and be pleasing to Him.  They would not properly be regarded as true men of faith if they had been disobedient in these things and if diligent obedience was not the overall testimony of their life.  Many think they can have faith in Jesus Christ and be in God’s grace without diligently following the way that faithful men like Abraham and Noah followed.  Yet that is as great a delusion as anything can be.  This is also why the “faith alone” doctrine falls flat on its face.  Acceptable faith in Jesus Christ suffers to follow the truth of God’s Word and to do righteousness before Him.   James chapter two makes it as clear as anything can be that a living faith absolutely must do this, and that people cannot be justified by faith alone.  The faithful, righteous, godly men of the Old Testament are consistently held up in the New Testament as examples for us of being justified by faith in God’s sight through Jesus Christ.  There is no other type of faith in Christ than the type of faith that men like Abraham and Noah had.  And those who point to the worst moments in the lives of the faithful men of the Old Testament to try to defend sin and compromise in their own lives, and to overall try to mitigate the uncompromising nature of acceptable Christianity, are doing something which these men who died in faith did not do themselves and doubtlessly would find abhorrent and shameful.

Living according to fleshly lust is guaranteed to result in spiritual death and condemnation (Romans 8:13, Galatians 5:19-21, etc).  Exercising faith in Jesus means crucifying one’s flesh by identifying with Him in His death to sin on the cross in order to live to God through Him.  Those truly abiding in Him thus walk in newness of life.

Choosing friends and family over faithfulness to God’s Word is idolatry which leaves one in the realm of darkness- and this ends in outer darkness where there is a furnace of fire, along with weeping and gnashing of teeth (Matthew 25:30 with Matthew 25:41 and 46).  Pursuing riches and financial security at the expense of obeying God’s Word is idolatry which leads to hellfire.  Riches can’t deliver one from God’s wrath on Judgment Day nor from calamity in this life.  

Proverbs 11:4: “Riches profit not in the day of wrath: but righteousness delivereth from death.”  

It can be truly said that when walking righteously leads a Christian into discomfort, rejection, great pain, great pressure, and/or other hardship that this is what they surrendered to, and what they signed up for, when they repented and came to Christ.  If someone’s heart wasn’t to give the Lamb who was slain glory by their life, following Him even unto suffering, and by cooperating with Him to mold them and purify them in whatever way He sees fit, then their controversy with God remains and they are yet in darkness, in their sins.  Nevertheless, even the real Christian often needs to be reminded of what they practically signed up for in coming to Christ.  This can easily be forgotten in the hour of trial when the fire is burning hot and they are actually feeling the heat.

1 Thessalonians 3:1-5: “Wherefore when we could no longer forbear, we thought it good to be left at Athens alone; And sent Timotheus, our brother, and minister of God, and our fellow-laborer in the gospel of Christ, to establish you, and to comfort you concerning your faith: That no man should be moved by these afflictions: for yourselves know that we are appointed thereunto.  For verily, when we were with you, we told you before that we should suffer tribulation; even as it came to pass, and ye know.  For this cause, when I could no longer forbear (this is the Apostle Paul speaking to the Thessalonian Christians), I sent to know your faith, lest by some means the tempter have tempted you, and our labor be in vain.”

It is normal for those who walk by faith and live righteously before God to intimately know affliction and/or perplexity and/or other hardships as a result of going the right way.  When this intimate knowledge hits home, there is a tendency to seek to get out of it and not go forward with the truth one has been following in order to get out of the suffering.  Yet leaving the path of righteousness in suffering separates one from the vine of spiritual life in Christ and leads to death.

God will accept a person who is truly repentant before Him, no matter how poorly they’ve been conditioned or trained to live as a Christian up until that point.  Yet poor training and/or flawed thinking could very well come back to bite someone as they are confronted afterwards with Christian discipline and the trials of Christian suffering.  An example would be if someone is used to gratifying themselves through drugs, alcohol, gluttony, entertainment, illicit sexual fulfillment, and/or other vices then they will suffer particularly when stresses in doing righteousness, or in relation to doing righteousness, come to them.  They have a disadvantage compared to someone who has never had such poor conditioning, addictions, and/or bad habits.   

Those without prior training in bearing physical pain, facing rejection from friends and/or family, facing the wrath of man in general, being alone without human comfort, having one’s reputation significantly damaged, bearing the burdens of others to a significant degree, financial hardship, working hard and/or long hours, going without much sleep, fasting, being in evident danger, not having anyone to admire them and/or listen to them, etc. are going to especially be tempted to turn back from the Lord when being faithful to the Lord means enduring such things.  It’s not that prior experience, or lack thereof, surely determines and guarantees what a Christian will do when confronted with such things as they bide in Christ and follow God’s Word.  Yet we should recognize that many (or all) of these things (and possibly more) will happen to someone eventually in following Christ.  We should thus prepare for such things in our minds and seek God for grace to handle them when we need to, with the understanding that the first time, or the first few times, in dealing with a given category of trial will probably be excruciatingly painful and greatly tempt one to regret doing right.  This preparation, or arming of the mind, is crucial if we are to abide in Christ and endure in walking on the narrow road to His kingdom.

1 Peter 4:1-5: “Forasmuch then as Christ hath suffered for us in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind: for he that hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin; That he no longer should live the rest of his time in the flesh to the lusts of men, but to the will of God.  For the time past of our life may suffice us to have wrought the will of the Gentiles, when we walked in lasciviousness, lusts, excess of wine, revellings, banquetings, and abominable idolatries: Wherein they think it strange that ye run not with them to the same excess of riot, speaking evil of you: Who shall give account to him that is ready to judge the quick (the living) and the dead.”

The Bible constantly relates Christ’s race to make an atonement for our sins with our need to be faithful to God through Him to actualize His purpose in us, to complete our own race of faith, and so partake of His redemption.  Jesus is not only the Lord and Savior, but He is also the Forerunner (see Hebrews 6:20) to those who in truth turn to Him as their Lord and Savior. 

Hebrews 12:9 (study this verse in the context of Hebrews chapter 12): “Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection unto the Father of spirits, and live?”

Hebrews 5:7-9: “Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared; Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by the things which he suffered; And being made perfect (that is, obeying the Father to the end as a man and going to the cross to be made an offering for our sins), he became the author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey him.”

Consider also James 2:5: “Hearken, my beloved brethren, Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him?”

This is not saying that all poor people will be saved and it’s not saying that only poor people can be saved.  However, poor people have the greatest capacity for genuine faith.  Since we must be poor in spirit to be saved, there is a sense in which any who would be saved and enter God’s kingdom must relate to Him as a poor person.

Remember Proverbs 18:10-11: “The name of the Lord is a strong tower: the righteous runneth into it, and is safe.  The rich man’s wealth is his strong city, and as an high wall in his own conceit (imagination).”

Also consider, in relation to man with God, Proverbs 22:7: “The rich ruleth over the poor, and the borrower is servant to the lender.”

We must look then to the Jesus of the Bible for His grace to keep His Word; and cooperate by doing it.  If we sin, we ought to confess and forsake it before Him- and then walk on in obedience to Him, confident of His true grace.  If we come to a better understanding that gives us more light on how we’ve fallen short and need to do better, we likewise must confess it and walk on in the light, confident of His grace (and outside of this context, confidence in His grace is vain and presumptuous).

1 John 2:1-6: “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not.  And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:  And he is the propitiation (atonement) for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.   And hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his commandments.   He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.  But whoso keepeth his word, in him verily (truly) is the love of God perfected: hereby know we that we are in him.   He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.”

Hebrews 4:15-16: ^“For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.   Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”

Consider also the Bible examples of failing to abide in Jesus.  Here are some of these.

John 6:66: “From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him.”  They were offended by a hard truth which Jesus brought before them.

Matthew 24:9-13: “Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name’s sake.   And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another.   And many false prophets shall rise, and shall deceive many.    And because iniquity (that is, lawlessness) shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold.   But he that shall endure unto the end, the same shall be saved.”

Matthew 13:20-22: “But he that received the seed into stony places, the same is he that heareth the word, and anon with joy receiveth it; Yet hath he not root in himself, but dureth for a while: for when tribulation or persecution ariseth because of the word, by and by he is offended.   He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful.”

Consider also the Apostles’ exhortations to those who received Christ in truth as they preached the Gospel.  These are different angles of faithfully exhorting Christians to abide (that is, remain or continue) in Christ.

Acts 11:22-23: “Then tidings of these things (a great number of gentiles having turned to the Lord) came unto the ears of the church which was in Jerusalem: and they sent forth Barnabas, that he should go as far as Antioch.  Who, when he came, and had seen the grace of God, was glad, and exhorted them all, that with purpose of heart they would cleave unto the Lord.”

Acts 13:43: “Now when the congregation was broken up, many of the Jews and religious proselytes followed Paul and Barnabas: who, speaking to them, persuaded them to continue in the grace of God.”

Acts 14:21-22: “And when they had preached the gospel to that city, and had taught many, they returned again to Lystra, and to Iconium, and Antioch, Confirming the souls of the disciples, and exhorting them to continue in the faith, and that we must through much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God.”

The Risen Jesus’ words to the seven churches in Asia, in Revelation chapters 2 and 3, give more key insight along the same lines.

Revelation 2:26-27: “And he that overcometh, and keepeth my works unto the end, to him will I give power over the nations: And he shall rule them with a rod of iron; as the vessels of a potter shall they be broken to shivers: even as I received of my Father.”

Revelation 3:4-6: “Thou hast a few names even in Sardis which have not defiled their garments; and they shall walk with me in white: for they are worthy.  He that overcometh, the same shall be clothed in white raiment (clothing); and I will not blot out his name out of the book of life, but I will confess his name before my Father, and before his angels.  He that hath an ear, let him hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches.”

The need to abide/remain/continue (they are all interchangeable words) in Christ is an essential Christian concept.  This abiding is not automatic nor guaranteed after a person has been born again in Jesus Christ.  It is no wonder that the devil would seek to oppose, negate, minimize, and/or vilify this concept then.  The need to be born again through faith in Jesus Christ is also an essential truth of Christianity.  Yet spiritual death can happen to a person after they’ve undergone a genuine new birth in Christ (and as previous studies have emphasized, the new birth in Christ has many shallow counterfeits also).  

The born-again Christian’s need to be diligent to remain attached to Christ in order to grow in Him, continue to live with Him, and endure to the end with Him in order to inherit life with Him is a truth which Jesus and the Apostles (supported by foundational truths in the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament) emphasized powerfully and frequently.

Aaron’s email is: [email protected]

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